Step inside (your best friend's corpse), it's a fucked up ride (through the wormhole)! Amena wishes this was a normal field trip, but with SecUnit? No way! Take your second right past Mars and join us while we talk about knees, gravity, faster than light travel, anxiety, and potential future cinematic choices for the show!

Covers Chapters 4-7 of The Murderbot Diaries: Network Effect by Martha Wells (2020)

Ep 2.8- Climb on the DarkMagic School Bus

Not all is well with Murderbot, but when is it ever? Ryn and Sam follow our favorite rogue SecUnit through the first three chapters of Network Effect, the first novel in the Murderbot Diaries! Topics include the gender politics of aunts, cis discomfort with trans presentation, intense feelings in platonic relationships, puppy eyes as a weapon of war, and Murderbot murdering on a murderboat. 

Covers Chapters 1-3 of The Murderbot Diaries: Network Effect (2020) by Martha Wells, winner of the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the  2020 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 2021 Locus Award for Best  Science Fiction Novel



Ep 2.7- Panic! at the Arts Festival/Conference/Religious Observance

here's been a murder! And despite what you might expect, it wasn't Murderbot's fault. It promises. And we promise topics including sleeper agents, queer assimilation, translation, and things that go blorp in the night.  

Covers The Murderbot Diaries: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (2021)

Ep 2.6- Cyberpunk Sherlock, Solarpunk Lestrade

So, as it turns out, there are there are also some short stories in the Murderbot Universe! We get to dig into the minds of some side characters, learn more about the origins of constructs, and talk about queerplatonic relationships, coming out, and non-human personhood! 

If our audio quality is a wee bit sharper on this one, it's because we had some issues with our primary recordings and were working from our backups, and Sam worked her wizardry as best she could. Bear with us. 

Timestamps for potential/light Network Effect spoilers: 0:40:04-1:04:08

This can be listened to in any order with the Fugitive Telemetry episode that you will see right above this in your feed! Your fate is your own! Choose your own adventure! Although I recommend this one first. 

Covers the following short stories/novelettes in the following timeline order, all of which are available for free online:

1. "Obsolescence", written for the anthology Take Us To A Better Place (2020)

2. "The Future of Work: Compulsory" written for Wired magazine (2018)

3. "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" released in Reactor magazine (2021)

4. "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy" written for Reactor magazine (2025)



Ep 2.5-Shorts: Drabbles, novelettes, flash fics, anecdotes

Murderbot has to go find some old friends! We're entirely normal about it acknowledging PresAux as friends. Other topics include consent, gender presentation/human-passing, the self and the body as separate but connected entities, and finally, as all folks hitchhiking on bot-driven transports across the galaxy must, we grapple with towels.   


Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol IV: Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Ep 2.4- You Beat Me To Hoopy Frood

Ryn and Sam are wildly unfocused, probably because we are simultaneously monitoring two dozen intel drones, HubSystem, and Episode 372 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon! And also being slightly horny on main, giving mini-reviews of horror movies and a romance novel, discussing Murderbot's D&D class, and once again providing evidence that capitalism is the worst villain! All before we get betrayed by our mysterious augmented human security team or before the terraforming station breaks up and falls out of orbit, whichever happens first... Anyway, come join us!

Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 3: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Ep 2.3- A Protocol of Rogues and Robots

Murderbot travels to RaviHyral to investigate... well, murder. That it may or may not have been responsible for. Join us as we grapple with concepts of non-human personhood, gender, terrible bosses, queerplatonic relationships formed on threats of terrible violence, and murder! So much murder.

Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 2: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Ep 2.2- Be Queerplatonic, Do Crime

Welcome to season 2! We begin with everyone's favorite heartless killing machine that just wants to watch Space Netflix and unfortunately keeps having emotions! Join Ryn and Sam as we discuss aliens, why capitalism is always the problem, international law in space, and sci-fi horror!   

Covers The Murderbot Diaries Book 1: All Systems Red by Martha Wells (2017)

Ep 2.1- Pass the (Preservation) Aux

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next phase of the Fandom Apprentice! If you're new to the pod, this is a great place to start- get (re)introduced to us as the hosts, our background with sci-fi, and our plans for season 2, focused on Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries! If you're a regular, come on in and get cozy with some new media!

Season 2 Intro- Sufficiently Advanced Podcasting is Indistinguishable from Magic

Ryn and Sam know absolutely nothing about poetry. Neither of us took a single college-level English course. That will not, of course, stop us from having opinions on Tolkien's poetry and songs. This is what Bilbo Baggins hates. And/or what the Man in the Moon himself came down to listen to. You be the judge!     There is also An Announcement: This Is The End. Of Tolkien commentary anyway. For now. An announcement on what media comes next can be found in the last few minutes of this episode, so stay tuned! We promise it will be an excellent time.

Featuring music and voices from Maury Laws, Glenn Yarborough, A.R. Rahman, Donald Swann, William Elvin, The Tolkien Ensemble, Sir Christopher Lee, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Howard Shore!

Interlude- I Sit Beside My Computer And Think...

Even the biggest nerds haven't seen it all- join Ryn and Sam on a guided journey through classic media that shaped our childhoods. A nostalgic romp for lifelong fans, and a perfect companion for anyone starting a fandom journey of their own.  New episodes every other Tuesday!
Season 2: We leave Middle Earth and head for the Corporation Rim with The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells! We follow everyone's favorite heartless killing machine that just wants to watch Space Netflix through a queernormative world where capitalism is always the bad guy, sarcasm and snark abound, and the starships have Opinions!

Season 1: a queer reading of the Lord of the Rings novels! We dive deep into this famously dense series with Ryn as our guide, examining Tolkien's historical and mythological influences, concocting our own theories on Hobbit masculinity, and speculating about what exactly Aragorn has going on under his tunic.  

The Fandom Apprentice